Then they fight you...
Ryan
Tomayko: I believe that a majority of people in IT now
consider dynamic languages like Perl, Ruby, Python, and PHP to be
very much capable of sitting at the table with Java and .NET for a
wide range of common technical problems. Similarly,
straight-forward systems like REST, Microformats, and Atom are
generally considered legitimate alternatives to the
vendor/analyst/press peddled technologies like WS-* for a wide
range of integration issues
It seems to me that civilization is now being shaped, in part, by two power supply/demand curves. First, there is the tendency of wages to rise. Second, there is the tendency of the price of computing power to fall. For as long as those two trends hold true, there will be a tendency to substitute computer power for programming power - in other words, there will be a trend toward scripting languages. Using ever-more abundant computer power to make programmers more productive is economically rational, and will remain so for as long as the above two trends hold true, which will probably be a while longer.
And if we think PHP and Ruby and Python are slick, we have to assume that they, too, will seem overly complicated 10 years from now, assuming computing power continues to fall in price.
I can’t imagine what comes next, though it is fun to speculate. Maybe something like UML will evolve into a purely visual programming language, where you simply assemble blocks to make stuff happen. Or maybe web APIs will become simple enough, and standarzied enough, that even folks on MySpace will find it easy to put together mashups that suit there needs.
Posted by Lawrence Krubner at